Fire Engulfs New Mexico Mountains
Smokey Bear was only a baby cub when a wicked conflagration slashed through the forest and grasslands of his home in southeastern New Mexico. Indeed, the Capitan Mountains of Lincoln National Forest was devastated by fire in the spring of 1950, a pair of blazes overtaking 17,000 acres in early May.
The Los Tablos fire, sparked on May 4, 1950, was successfully contained after burning roughly 1,000 acres. The Capitan Gap fire started closely after and near the same location, but was far more explosive and produced much more damage. High, forceful winds pushed the heat furiously in all four directions, and firefighters struggled for a week to fully extinguish the enormous mass of fire. Though no human fatalities were reported, significant destruction was meted out to wildlife and their habitat.
Only months old, the terrified black bear clung to a tree; if it had not, it might have been incinerated in the flames. Its mother was nowhere to be found, and after volunteers and rescuers discovered the badly scorched animal, they removed it from the tree and forest.
Its wounds and burns were considerable, especially to its paws and hind legs. However, the animal was looked after with great tenderness and care and lovingly nursed back to better health.
Immediately, the cub became a symbol of the suffering wrought in the wilderness by human carelessness, the destructive toll inflicted by cigarettes, campfires, cabin cook stoves, and cars. Human activity was suspected as the culprit in both the Los Tablos and Capitan Gap Fires, and the rehabilitated bear could be used as an educational and empathy-generating tool to raise public awareness. It could be used to not only inform and modify behavior but would also become an instrument to teach, saving not only resources, money, and time, but the lives of both animals and humans. If packaged and presented as compassion-worthy, the bear—sentient, congenial, and even wise—could do more for fire safety and prevention awareness with a single slogan than one million textbooks and lectures combined.
The idea of “Smokey Bear” had been circulating for several years before the New Mexico. Now, however, there was a living being to connect to the concept—a flesh-and-blood creature that could generate empathy in a way that an inanimate sketch or cartoon could not; an animal that was a true survivor.
The Creation and Popularization of Smokey
Smokey Bear now had a designation, a connotation, and an objective, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service needed the right artist to conjure up the visual elements. German-born Albert Staehle (1899–1974), had found steady work as an illustrator of animals, most famously Butch the Dog. It was a mischievous black-and-white cocker spaniel frequently gracing the covers of The Saturday Evening Post and American Weekly. He was awarded the commission.The first poster of Smokey Bear painted by Staehle depicted the bear in blue jeans and a brown hat, pouring a silver bucket of water on a sizzling campfire. Seamlessly conveying an arty and educational blend, Smokey became an irresistible attraction, appearing in more and more advertisements and promotional materials.
Staehle, who was replaced by other Smokey artists, continued to illustrate domestic and wild animals elsewhere, and though he achieved a good deal of accomplishment in his lifetime, died in relative anonymity in Miami at age 74.
Son of a rural Kansas mail carrier, Rudy Wendelin (1910–2000) was perhaps the most passionate and prolific of Smokey’s replacement artists. Wendelin started drawing maps with the U.S. Forestry in Milwaukee in 1933 and he was transferred to the Washington office in 1937.
For several decades, he served as an artist and art coordinator for the U.S. Forest Service. From the 1940s to his retirement in 1973, Wendelin kept a furious pace, sharpening up Smokey’s likeness, creating advertisements for miscellaneous media, and distributing materials to schools, museums, and visitor centers nationwide. Post-retirement, he worked under a special contract to continue to work on the creation of Smokey-related projects.
Smokey the Living Symbol
The rangers and volunteers who rescued and treated the small cub with burned paws in the New Mexico fires in 1950 initially called him “Hotfoot Teddy.” After the U.S. Forest Service adopted the orphaned critter, he became known as “Smokey,” a living symbol of an initiative conceived and refined by Staehle, Wendelin, and others.
The flashing cameras, the smiling children, the sheltered accommodations, the constant stock of grub—these were some of the by-products of fame. The public never bored of Smokey and media attention continued. At age 22, Smokey was “turning a little gray around the nose and eyebrows,” according to the DeRidder Enterprise, though still in good overall condition. Its circumstances, and the enormous curiosity that it always attracted, were unique—and it even sensed it. Smokey was “more of an executive type,” a handler told one publication, “not a bear to beg for tidbits and food from tourists.”
In 1974, it was reported that Smokey was troubled by arthritis and other slight infirmities. Mindful of the bear’s mortality, Congress instructed that the animal, upon its death, be returned to its ancestral homeland of New Mexico. In May 1975, Smokey “retired” from its post as a forest fire prevention representative, replaced by another bear also named “Smokey.”
On Nov. 9, 1976, 26 years after it was first found scared and scarred in the forest, Smokey Bear took its last breath, its death reportedly a combination of ill-health and old age. Its remains were buried in Capitan, New Mexico, close to the Capitan Mountains, a resting place now part of the Smokey Bear Historical Park.
